Really thought provoking article from Meghan Murphy

[QuentinBunbury]

I really enjoyed this
www.feministcurrent.com/2021/06/17/feminism-has-failed-to-offer-tools-for-young-women-to-truly-feel-empowered/
She's framed it around feminism but actually I think it's a reflection of society and current parenting practices. Maybe there is a correlation with the fact that women are under greater pressure to be amazing mothers as the housework burden has been reduced.

Anyway, am interested in others thoughts and what as feminists we can do to respond to some of the issues she raises

No one else?

I think she makes some really interesting points, many that feminists on the board have talked about for a long time.
We are raising a generation of entitled kids, parents who give in because it's easier that dealing with the problem, is all too common starting from when they are babies.

The modern world is fast changing, everyone wants to keep up, no one wants to be seen as the one missing out on latest trends, gadgets etc.. parents provide these things at the drop of a hat, allowing 8 year olds to have smart phones and access to social media "because all their friends are on it and I don't want the be the bad guy" instead of protecting children's innocence and standing firm.

I have too many thoughts on this really I could be here all day🤣

In the comments section, a commenter says that self esteem has to be earned. I never thought of it like that before but it makes sense.
I think that parenting advice from when mine were small was that self esteem can be imposed if you just mother right so if your child has low self esteem, it makes you a bad mother. But that takes away autonomy from the child. And the idea that no child is ever naughty takes away the possibility of learning to redeem oneself and make amends. I am rambling but these are the thoughts that essay provokes.

I am not sure how to relate them to feminism yet though. Anyone else?

Thanks for linking - I like it too! I relate to how she feels too - in having a robust ego and not needing others' validation all the time. And I actually think it's an important skill/state to achieve if you can, and one of the cornerstones of actually being happy.

I don't know if I agree that feminism hasn't had anything to offer - through my lifetime (now in my 50s) there has been a lot of feminist work to encourage girls to see themselves as capable, to not be put off any career by sexism - in the last 10-20 years, a lot of efforts in STEM in particular to do this. It's just that it tends to be drowned out by the "empower yourself by posing naked " "feminism" of mainstream media and culture. Feminists have also worked really hard to gain actual safe spaces, refuges for women, recognition of DV, and so on.

What I think is most empowering for girls is being encouraged to pursue what they want to do and what they are good at, having their rights to privacy and power over their own bodies reinforced and protected, being encouraged to be whatever kind of girl they want, whether feminine or not, straight or not, etc.

I think there is always backlash against any feminist gains and genderism is one form that takes, disguised as something progressive. It works against the idea that you could just be a girl who doesn't happen to fit a girly stereotype (or a boy likewise). But that hasn't happened alone - it's happened with the help of a huge societal increase in gender stereotyping via clothes, airbrushing, cosmetic surgery, etc.

And then on top of that there's the whole parenting issue where kids are brought up to feel nothing bad should ever happen to them and they should never have upset feelings - instead of raising children to cope with those things. But I'm not sure where that's come from (though I've seen it at first hand over the years since I've had DC)

Thanks for linking - I like it too! I relate to how she feels too - in having a robust ego and not needing others' validation all the time. And I actually think it's an important skill/state to achieve if you can, and one of the cornerstones of actually being happy.

I think this is a really good point, we should be teaching our girls self worth from a young age and also teaching them that external validation will only last a short time before they are craving more.
We need to teach our girls (all children really) to be resilient, and I don't see many who are.

I wouldn't describe it as thought provoking and I'm not sure the powerless victim narrative is unique to young women, it seems quite pervasive in western culture but especially prevalent in younger people.

The "robust ego" she describes is acquired through living; adverse experiences usually providing the most transformative lessons. How do we convince young women that confronting difficulty is the route to confidence when they perceive even the mildest challenge as a gross injustice which makes them feel unsafe.

There are many challenges facing young women today but rather that accept the reality of the world as it actually is and working in constructive ways to change it they seem paralysed with anger that they have been exposed to any hardship in the first place.

We seem very poor at teaching people about boundaries, the demand for external validation is unreasonable and leaves self esteem vulnerable to removal by the very people who gave it. Daily examples of cancel culture are seen as social justice being dispensed rather than a comment on our shared failings as humans and it is never treated as a lesson in humility. People seem unable to make the connection cancel culture and their own anxiety, it's like a fear of falling off the hamster wheel of approval so there is no energy left for the esteemable actions which would make self esteem independently sustainable.

That is a big disjointed ramble but hope some of it makes sense.

The Scottish curriculum tries to teach "resilience" which looks like a good idea on paper, but actually is very annoying because it basically consists of songs and platitudes about how you have to be resilient - but very little about how to actually cope with adversity, how validation and self-esteem work, etc. So it can actually be counterproductive because if you aren't resilient about something you just feel like a stupid loser.

For me an important point is that it's OK to feel knocked back, sad, disappointed, to have a shit day or to be suffering from an adverse event. But you ca come back from it, you can learn skills for accepting difficulties and you can learn from experience that you'll get past it. It's about learning a process, not just a state of mind.

Very well said actually. I have 3 dcs and try to drum a lot of that into them. It is extremely hard to push back though.
Small things would really help - like a no cell phone policy in schools. Just that act of stopping for 8 hours in day would be very significant.
I do not know what the answers are but certainly recognise what she is addressing.

I remember reading about a study that said the best self-esteem outcomes for kids came from making an effort to achieve something, and people recognising their effort, rather than just being told how great they are. That makes instinctive sense to me. Just being told over and over that you are fantastic does not actually link to a sense of a self and who you are and what you can do.

But I have a lot of friends who do this with their DC all the time, clearly with the intention of building self-esteem. From birth, just saying you're great, you're fab, this is brilliant, and also, no you weren't naughty, you didn't mean to. Like everything has to be positive or else you are damaging your child. But why?

On one memorable occasion a friend's child attacked my child and his mum comforted him and told him he didn't meant to. He screamed "I DID mean to!" It was like he couldn't get her to see him.

(Of course now I'm worried I sound like a mean mum who never dishes out praise, but it's not that! Just that I think negative, mistakes, fights etc are part of life and you can't protect your DC from these things 100%)

I thought it was interesting that she said feminism isn't effective because it's "smash the patriarchy". For me, I'm comfortable talking about the patriarchy as the wider social and political systems that oppress women, but I also see enough posts on here distancing themselves from the term and asking "so what are you actually going to do?" to know its not straightforward.

I also think the patriarchy is a class analysis and so may not be a useful concept to help individual women. There is definitely something that we could be doing to help women articulate and own their own experiences and realities, not to need "valudation" all the time. More though, not to feel its a female role to provide that validation.

On one memorable occasion a friend's child attacked my child and his mum comforted him and told him he didn't meant to. He screamed "I DID mean to!" It was like he couldn't get her to see him.

This is exactly what I mean about parenting! I have close friends that parent this way and I think it isn't helping their children to learn about other people's boundaries and making amends. It's putting words in their mouths and giving them the language to justify why they were entitled to hurt someone else. When those children are boys, it actually makes my blood run cold at how they could grow up.

Plus the whole "oh he's only hurting you because he likes you!" Is very confusing to boys and girls about appropriate ways to show affection.

I think that parenting advice from when mine were small was that self esteem can be imposed if you just mother right so if your child has low self esteem, it makes you a bad mother.
Yes. So women are so scared of "damaging" their child they overcompensate, which causes other kinds of damage. And of course most men opt out or aren't subject to the same pressure. This is the bit I wished Murphy had explored more because I feel that oppression of women is causing the very "validation" problem she describes.

It's interesting about men because DH never opted out but we did quarrel a bit about how to parent. I was for the, well, gentler parenting and he was for a firmer style. Now, in hindsight, I think he was absolutely right, but I do wonder about how biology might affect mothers. I was breastfeeding at the time and I wonder if this made me less willing to impose the boundaries that they should have had.

My DC are, fwiw, nice well-mannered children so I haven't done too badly but I am working on their resilience now and I have always been willing to tell them when they have behaved badly.

I think feeling that if you do something wrong that amends can be made is actually empowering in that you have control over your actions. The current cancel culture allows no room for amends only abasement so no wonder everyone wishes to keep on the 'right' side.

women are so scared of "damaging" their child they overcompensate, which causes other kinds of damage. And of course most men opt out or aren't subject to the same pressure. This is the bit I wished Murphy had explored more because I feel that oppression of women is causing the very "validation" problem she describes.

That's a great insight and helps me make more sense of it! Women are still - whatever people claim - seen as the main parenters and responsible for how their kids turn out.

I think "smash the patriarchy" is a good sentiment in as far as it's good to understand that there is a patriarchy, and ideally how it works and that it's what we need to change. But also, a bit like "Black lives matter", it's become a thing that some people will use as a slogan or marker of their wokeness without really having much idea what the problems really involve, and while not actually resisting them.

I mean if you're a self-identified feminist who thinks that TWAW, getting your kit off for men is empowering, and sex work is fine and dandy, you may not be very close to my idea of a feminist but you still consider yourself one. So "smash the patriarchy" really just means "I'm a feminist" without having ventured to look at how you are carrying out the patriarchy's aims for it.

Part of this is due to a broader problem on the left, which feminism has attached itself to. The complete rejection of individualism (something I also rejected for most of my life) has left young women (and, really, young people in general) without many tools with which they can build themselves up into strong, independent, confident people.

I can't say whether it's a matter of the left or rejection of individualism, but if I substitute tribalism for those, or even leave the first part of the sentence out, the rest of the sentence does resonate with me. Young women/ young people in general do lack tools to help them make themselves as adults. Maybe it's the combination of circumstances theorised in "The Coddling of the American Mind" (part way down the page here: www.thefire.org/catching-up-with-coddling-part-one-introduction/), or maybe it's the lack of stability experienced by this generation: it can't help to have insecure work, overwork/underwork, secure housing being out of reach without parental help, an existential threat (climate change) which individuals can supposedly contribute to or stave off, whereas Generation X individuals were perfectly powerless to prevent nuclear war... It's a lot of pressure! And I wonder whether the constant scrutiny affects their sense of self, too.

As in the OP statement, this isn't about feminism.

But this is part of MM increasingly public statement to distance herself from feminism because she feels feminism (whoever that is or who she decided to listen to) is dictating to her.

So would have had more respect if she hadn't had a title putting the blame on feminism, and had bothered to be better informed about what media / university feminism promotes rather than say women who are committed feminists.

Makes you wonder why she still has Feminist Current as her brand name. Wonder what a more appropriate name change would be?

(I dont think her criticism of trans self id ever really was a feminist one, but she was someone who early on was brave enough to speak out so many feminists just thought she must be one of us.)

That's a really interesting blog medusa thanks for linking it

I got to this article from the blog which has lots of pertinent points
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/childhood-in-an-anxious-age/609079/

E.g. working parents make accommodations that increase anxiety because they don't have time to truly deal with issues
Girl children's anxieties are validated and acted on differently to boys which may predispose girls to future mental illness

stumbled I'm not surprised she's distanced herself from "feminism" given the aggressive personal attacks/doxxing/threats she's recieved for being an outspoken radical feminist.
I think she's saying that Liberal feminism is too individualistic and radical feminism not concrete enough for either to be effective. I am inclined to agree.

@QuentinBunbury

That's a really interesting blog medusa thanks for linking it

I sat on my response too long and everyone else started contributing! Sorry!

@QuentinBunbury

I got to this article from the blog which has lots of pertinent points www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/childhood-in-an-anxious-age/609079/

E.g. working parents make accommodations that increase anxiety because they don't have time to truly deal with issues
Girl children's anxieties are validated and acted on differently to boys which may predispose girls to future mental illness

Yes, the anxiety is a real worry (for me, at least). If they feel under constant scrutiny, they won't make mistakes, becuase they won't think they can come back from mistakes. I do think that is a feminist issue, though, because girls and women are disproportionately subject to what is, I think, classically called the Male Gaze. Whoever's in the central seat of the social media panopticon these days (including lots of girls looking at one another, judging, comparing, etc.), it's not healthy.

So there's no "safe" way to get up to speed, and at the same time, you have to have an amazing "persona" to compete, or be acceptable. I feel so sorry for them. This is the new "Catch 21" (2021, that is!)

Just posted this on the wrong thread...

MM talks about:
a feminism that tells women they are helpless victims of culture and society, and that they can’t empower themselves until we “smash the patriarchy,” whatever that means.

See I do think this is absolutely a thing, but I don't think it's a radical feminist thing. I see it as part of liberal feminism or feminism-lite, to moan that for example, women can't become pop stars unless they dance about in their underwear, or Carrie Johnson can't swim in the sea because the papers will talk about her body (which I took issue with on another thread), or that it's hard for women to work because of the cost of childcare.

These things assume an inability in women to challenge the status quo, and essentially reinforce a patriarchy-defined role for women.

Whereas I see radical feminism (and my own feminism) to be about finding ways to do those things and change the imbalance - such as asserting in my own relationship that childcare was our cost, not my cost, or pointing out that women can and do break out of stereotypes and expectations, and acting as if they are outliers not worth a mention just reinforces the stereotypes.